BBV - temporary paper shortage, ink marks, homemade ballots etc.

[harmonyguy]

The printers had planned for 3.5 million ballot orders, but instead received 4.2 million orders, causing a temporary paper shortage, she said. Gregg County ordered its ballots Sept. 14.

Pam Brock, Harrison County elections administrator, said Harrison's ballots were delayed when printers had to reprint them after finding ink marks. The corrected ballots were shipped Wednesday and are expected to arrive today, she said.

Brock said the county already has shipped 155 ballots to overseas and stateside military personnel using paper ballots made with the county's inkjet printer. On Election Day, she said, the county will have to decide whether to hand-count those ballots or reproduce them onto the high-quality ballots.

http://www.news-journal.com/news/newsfd/auto/feed/news/2004/10/07/1097121862.18121.3536.3466.html

[SoCalDem]

1. What a bunch of amateurs !!!!

These officials act as if the election was just sprung on them.. Like they "didn't know" it was gonna happen..

Election 2K should have sent a HUGE message.. BE PREPARED..

They only had 3 and 1/2 YEARS to prepare :eyes:

[harmonyguy]

2. I believe that for some of them

an election interferes with their normal day-to-day life.

There are exceptions of course, being the good election officials of both parties, who are prepared, know what they're doing, and actually give a hoot about democracy. To them, and especially to those who have come here to learn and to share their expertise with us, I say good-on-ya!
:thumbsup: :toast: :thumbsup:

[ISUGRADIA]

3. Don't be so hard on the election officials

I worked in an Auditor's Office in Iowa. The final ballot is not set until all independent, down ballot races filing deadlines are met. Then ballot rotations must be determined for some races by the Board of Supervisors who don't meet daily.

When this is done it's early September when the ballots are sent to the printers. So only a two week window until ballots are sent out for absentees. If the printer is swamped, you cannot blame the election officials.

It may be different in Cal, but there are likely late race deadlines they have to put up with also.

[harmonyguy]

4. I guess I continue to compare with Canada....

....where the system actually works pretty well. From the time an election is called (date set) there are 36 days to campaign, get the ballots printed, staff hired, trained, and done.

They still use paper ballots, manually counted, with party scrutineers, and we know the results within a couple of hours of the polls closing. If there needs to be a recount, there's actually something TO recount.

While I may seem to be hard on election officials, I realize that there ARE good ones out there, trying to work within a flawed system. Unfortunately, I keep reading too many tales of inept, or incompetent ones, who are repeating the same mistakes over and over and over again, and then one of them comes out with a statement something like "It happens every time".
If it happens every time, what are they doing to circumvbent the problem, so it doesn't happen NEXT time?

They are being paid to RUN the election process, not to have the election process RUN-OVER them.

HG

[ISUGRADIA]

5. I'd agree there are more than a few inept election officials

It seems like poor management and attention to details, a lot of this is not rocket science, just attention to detail.

For example, the county in Iowa where absentee ballots went out with the race for US CONGRESS MISSING. Huh? Where I worked ballots were double, tripled, quadroopled checked before and after going to the printers. Yet in this one county voters got ballots that were this flawed.

Not very competent.